“Stay in touch!"

That seems to be the main message in most of what people wrote in my senior yearbook. For a long time I felt guilty because in the past year I've done exactly the opposite. Outside of liking pictures on Instagram, or favoriting a tweet here and there, the amount of interactions I've had with people from my high school can be counted on one hand.

Until I moved off to college in August, I had been living in the same town for 18 and a half years. I graduated with many of the same people I had started middle school with. In that time, a lesson I learned is that people hate change. They hate it so much that they will try so hard to keep you in a little box, to keep you in their comfort zone. People I knew in 8th Grade (and hadn't had a conversation with since then) still expected me to be the same person that I was in 12th Grade.

If I can teach anything to anyone, I want it to be that change is great, change is powerful, and change is the only thing in life that is certain.

For a huge portion of my life, I was a very awkward girl. When I say awkward, I don't mean that cute version of awkwardness that they show on TV. I mean full on wearing high-water mom jeans and t-shirts that used to belong to my brothers, and were too big on me (but not in the cute sratty way). I dreaded talking to adults on the phone, and making appointments was beyond my capabilities. Here's evidence:

Go ahead and laugh, I do.

In the summer before my junior year of high school, I decided I didn't like who I was. I had very little self confidence, I didn't say what I thought as much as I should have, and I let people walk all over me. That wasn't who I wanted to be, so I decided to change who I was.

But no matter how much I changed myself and tried to be the person I wanted to be, the people around me wouldn't let me. Anytime I did or said something I hadn't done before, I was greeted with “Whoa, Camila, when did you change?" and people would ask me why I was acting differently. It was really difficult, being stuck somewhere between who I was previously and who I was trying to be. My mistakes from years back were always in the back of people's minds, just waiting for the right moment to remind me, to lasso me back in to who I used to be.

And then I graduated. Out of the four-hundred and fifty people that I graduated with, somewhere around fifteen decided to go to the same college as me. I had a chance to be someone I couldn't be before. I cut my hair, went to Camp Crimson, joined a sorority, and was given the opportunity to meet so many different types of people who think and act differently than the people where I come from. I've gained so many new experiences, greater confidence, and discovered things about myself that I've never known. I've been given an opportunity to make new memories and new mistakes with a new group of people who want that same opportunity.

Every once in a while, an old friend will comment on a picture or reply to my tweet saying they miss me, and I might do the same. But the thing is, more often than not, friends from high school stay friends from high school. While today I still do talk to certain people, the rest simply remain acquaintances and followers. It's nice to check in and see how their life is going and to see them make new friends, but it's okay to let the friendship become a great memory. It's okay to let go of the past and live in the present.

I've seen a lot of my underclassmen post things about being scared about losing friends once they graduate. But the reality is that college is such a wonderful place of growth and is the time of your life when you will meet the most people. Just because you might disconnect from close friends in high school doesn't mean you will be alone. You will find your niche and find people who will be some of your closest friends, even after knowing them for a few short months. Don't miss that chance to meet new people because you're scared of letting go of all the old friends. Let college be the place where you meet your bridesmaids and your groomsmen. Let it be where you find your person.